Gerald L. Epstein

Since October 2009, Gerald Epstein has been director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Security Policy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general-purpose scientific society. He previously served as senior fellow for science and security in the CSIS Homeland Security Program. He came to CSIS in 2003 from the Institute for Defense Analyses, where he was assigned to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. From 1996 to 2001, he worked at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), serving for the last year in a joint appointment as assistant director for national security at OSTP and senior director for science and technology on the National Security Council staff. From 1983 to 1989 and again from 1991 until its demise in 1995, Dr. Epstein worked on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction other international security topics at the Office of Technology Assessment. From 1989 to 1991, he directed a project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government on the relationship between civil and military technologies. He has also taught at Princeton and Georgetown Universities.

Dr. Epstein is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves on the Biological Threats Panel of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on International Security and Arms Control and on the Biological Sciences Experts Group for the director of national intelligence. He is currently a member of the editorial board for the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism and has completed a term on the Advisory Board of the American Chemical Society’s publication Chemical and Engineering News. He has served as chair of the American Physical Society’s Committee on International Scientific Affairs and as a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Science, Security, and Prosperity. He received S.B. degrees in physics and electrical engineering from MIT, has done research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley.